Emil Van Zandt III

Name: Emil Van Zandt III

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Grade: 12

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: Self Improvement Vlogging, YouTube Challenges, Comedy, Skateboarding, Working Out, Furry Fandom.

Appearance: Emil is a somewhat tall, and rather lean individual standing at 5'11, and weighing in around 162 pounds. He’s rather muscular from working out, though his routine keeps him built smaller and lean rather than bulked up. He’s caucasian with a tanned complexion, with a diamond shaped face. He has blue droopy hooded eyes, and flat eyebrows. He has a small snub shaped nose. He has thin, but wide downturned lips. He has dark brown hair styled in an asymmetrical, emo styled side part, with the right side of the fringe ending just above his ear, and the left side going down to just above his upper lip. His facial features in combination with his hair gives him a perpetual melancholy look on his face. He’s got multiple piercings along his face, having two loops on his right ear, and ring piercings on his right eyebrow, left nostril, and the left side of his lower lip. His right ear has a chunk missing due to a botched Youtube stunt. He has a tattoo of a blue rabbit marshmallow peep with a bite mark taken out of the right ear on his right bicep.

His voice is rather deep, and he tends to speak with a monotone inflection, and for many people it’s hard to tell when he’s actually surprised or just being sarcastic.

He tends to prefer upper end urban fashion when it comes to his wardrobe. Sometimes he wears more ‘gangster’ themed attire, and other days he goes for a business casual, mixing vests, rolled sleeved dress shirts, and skinny jeans. On the day of the abduction he was wearing a dark magenta colored oblique fashion hoodie with a white trim, with a black sleeveless T-shirt underneath. He wore a pair of black biker style zipper deco styled jeans, with pink highlights along the pockets, zipper, and ribbed knee protection, held up with a white studded belt. For footwear he wore a white pair of Jordans with a purple and silver trim, and pink shoe strings.

For accessories he wore a black shark tooth necklace, a dog tag necklace, a wallet chain, and a set of various rings placed along multiple fingers.

Biography: Emil III was born to Emil ‘Little M’ Jr. and Margaret Van Zandt in a Knoxville hospital on December 2nd, 1999. ‘Little M Jr.’ is the son of Emil Sr, and owner of the Fried Boot, a military themed chicken wing bar and grill meets roadside diner franchise that litters highways from Kentucky to Florida, famous for their old school military barracks shaped buildings, camouflage uniform shirts, and the Napalm Wing challenge.

Emil III had a very comfortable upbringing due to his parents being rather well-off thanks to their franchise, so he’d never had to worry about financial issues. Throughout Elementary School, Emil was seen as a rather nice kid, if a bit outgoing. He was noted to have a bit of a peer pressure issue, however. Some of the other kids had found out that Emil will do anything for a dare, especially if there was a crowd watching. From eating bugs, to jumping off of playground equipment, Emil will do it if he were dared to. His parents weren’t too worried too much, to them it just seemed like kids being kids.

Once Emil reached middle school his dares took more drastic turns, and from watching shows like Jackass and Rob Dyrdeck’s Fantasty Factory, it got Emil interested in both skateboarding and extreme stunts. He moved up from dares to challenges, intentionally doing things that could cause bodily harm or pain on the basis that he thought it made him look cool. His parents inadvertently enabled his activities when they took Emil to a Fried Boot for his twelfth birthday, recording him at his request, on attempting and later failing the Napalm Wing Challenge. Later that night, Emil made his YouTube Channel, Thumper Chain-Snatcher 2000, the avatar being Thumper from Bambi dressed out in gangster attire, and posted his first video.

While not being an immediate hit, Emil noticed that he was picking up followers rather quickly, and throughout the rest of middle school, began doing challenges that were popular at the time, like the ALS challenge, the Salt and Ice challenge, Warheads challenges, and occasional skateboarding videos with the various bails that littered them.

Upon reaching High School his channel was snowballing and picking up viewers at an increased rate, and he increased his video count to keep viewers. For his 15th birthday, he did a redo of the Napalm Wing Challenge, this time successful. From there he added on more skateboarding videos, and more outlandish challenges. Despite this, he felt as though his view counts began to stagnate, so again he increased the octane of content he was releasing, going into World’s Hottest Pepper Challenges, to getting Tasered or OC Sprayed. He noticed the view counts increased, but he still hadn’t reached internet gold yet. His family was starting to get worried about Emil and his attempts at internet fame.

Upon reaching Sophomore year, he released a video involving him eating a baby cactus straight out of the pot, and suddenly viewers skyrocketed. He realized that simply doing other challenges weren’t enough and that many people didn’t really care for things they seen done already, so he began to do more outlandish stunts that he thought nobody would attempt. One night during the summer break between Sophomore and Junior year, Emil had called one of his buddies to his house to help him with a custom challenge. Emil had asked his friend to use a Red Ryder BB gun to pierce his ear. After much hype, the deed was done, but it was done pretty horribly, causing a chunk of his ear to get blown off. During the video Emil quickly covered the injury with a towel, and downplayed what actually happened by keeping his cool, and hiding the injury until he finished saying what he needed to say. The few shots that could be seen before he had covered it up were blurred in post production. After the video was done, Emil’s parents rushed him to the hospital. At this point his family told him enough was enough, and that he was not going to do any more dumb stunts like that. Emil was forced to accept that, but the moment he went home and checked the video he uploaded on it. It was trending and had reached a million views alone, not including other previous uploads. To Emil, it was totally worth it.

When doing a Q-A livestream one night, Emil noticed a fan posting artwork of him as a rabbit persona, messed up ear and all. He enjoyed the artwork and managed to get permission to use it as his new YouTube avatar, even commissioning the original artist to do artwork thumbnails for previous and current videos. From that artist he managed to get into the furry fandom, which helped boost his views as well. He frequently pays for commissions from his favorite artists, and links their artwork in his videos to help them garner more support. As a result of this, he's gotten support from the furry fandom, which helped increase his views.

On Junior year, Emil received his Driver’s License, and starting from there, he drove everywhere he could. One snowy weekend before school, Emil took his mom’s Prius out for a night time drive, just to do a simple trip to the grocery store and back. Driving along a curved road, his breaks locked up and Emil ended up wrecking his mom’s car, totaling it as it slid off the road and landed on it's side. Crawling out of the vehicle, Emil called his parents, then awaited help. During the time it took for them to get there, Emil had decided to make the best of a bad situation, and record a three minute video, involving him surveying the damage he caused to his vehicle, and joking about the incident. Shortly later, Emil was taken to the hospital where he learned he had a minor cerebral contusion and a cracked rib. Shortly after being released from the hospital, Emil has posted the video to YouTube, and not much later his parents saw it. They were furious, and came to the conclusion that he intentionally crashed his car for the video, and were angry at the blatant disrespect he showed during it. From then on, Emil's parents placed their foot down, there would be no more videos of that nature, because they feared it made them look neglectful, and that it made Emil look like an entitled brat.

From there he was grounded from his YouTube Channel, his last video was him giving a forced apology and telling the audience he would be on a year hiatus. The hiatus wasn’t a full year however, with him being allowed back online after four months, showing good behavior and a good work ethic at his family’s restaurant. He was not allowed to make any more stunt videos or challenges, so he had to brainstorm new ideas for content. He thought of a loophole, going for a self-improvement theme with a focus on working out, and keeping the challenges workout related. He chose to replace his injury inducing challenges with a workout themed challenge series, trading off biting cactuses and using BB guns to shoot himself with workout routines like The MARSOC challenge or performing 1000 sit ups over the course of a day. The origins of the new challenges started out as breakoff workouts in keeping with his pain=views mindset. While he was already in shape before the videos, they tended to break him off much faster and be incomplete more often than his later videos, due to not being as prepared as them physically. It wasn't until much later on that he revisited his earlier workout challenges, that he managed to become strong enough to complete them in the time limit he imposed on himself.

By the time Senior year arrived, Emil was allowed to drive again, and was told he didn’t have to go to work anymore, but he still chose to due to enjoying it there, and to keep on his family’s good side. He was allowed to drive to school and back, but never at night, and never too far from home, which he thought was pretty understandable considering the circumstances.

Emil is seen as a relatively friendly person to his classmates, if somewhat airheaded. He has trouble with understanding other people’s issues, and can come off as insensitive. Others might not like Emil due to his Try-Hard no-excuses nature, and could be put off by him trying to provide moral support. He has a personal belief that nobody cares at people whining, and would rather see them do something to change it, rather than complaining.

Emil’s not too sure what he wants to do out of high-school. He’s torn between wanting to help his family and go to college to keep their restaurant chain moving, and wanting to continue his career as an E-celeb. He’s hoping to be able to do both, but he’s not too sure if he can deal with that sort of stress, something he doesn’t let other people in on. Academically, he's rather sub par. His grades average around C's and D's, with the highs being B-'s. His grades are primarily that way due to mixture of lack of motivation revolving around his classes and legitimately not understanding some of the harder problems.

Advantages: Emil is rather athletic due to working out, and has an increased pain tolerance due to the stunts he pulls. He's not very keen on giving up after his failures, and is known for trying again at something until he succeeds in it.

Disadvantages: Emil's biggest issue is that he is rather reckless and tends to jump into situations without thinking of them. Due to many of the scenarios he puts himself through, Emil thinks he's practically indestructible, an opinion that could easily be proven wrong given the circumstances. Emil is not as well liked by his classmates as he thinks he is. He’s got a rather inflated ego of himself, and many would like to see him knocked down a notch. He’s also not that bright, making it rather easy to fool him.

Designated Number: Male student no. 050

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Designated Weapon: Collar Radar (range of 100 yards)

Conclusion: Of course this goes to the one kid that's probably too dumb to use it. - Josie Knight

'The above biography is as written by ToxieTheToxicAvenger. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: ToxieTheToxicAvenger

Kills: None

Killed By: Lorenzo Tavares

Collected Weapons: Collar Radar (range of 100 yards) (assigned weapon)

Allies: Emmett Bunnell

Enemies: Lorenzo Tavares

Mid-game Evaluation: Emil started out by evaluating his weapon- he was able to follow it up the beach to the nearest person, Emmett Bunnell, but he was also wary of another dot in the vicinity. Emmett was having a clearly difficult time, crying hysterically, Emmett was sympathetic, and offered that they buddy up so they could find a group- though there would be difficulty due to how the collar radar worked. Lorenzo finally approached them, threatening them for the collar radar. Both Emmett and Emil mocked him for his efforts, Lorenzo had little to say save for a menacing approach. Emil stood his ground, telling Emmett to run with the collar radar, so they could threaten to break it if the fight got out of hand. Lorenzo swung for the kneecaps, Emil threw a bag and thus allowed Emil to evade. Emil told Lorenzo to back off, but the belligerent kept coming. Emil got Lorenzo on the ground by forcing him to dodge, but Lorenzo did the same back.

Post-Game Evaluation: 

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below is a list of threads containing Emil, in chronological order.

The Past: The Trip: V7:
 * Young, Dumb, and Not-So Broke, High School Kids
 * Room 709 but not quite: Fight!
 * Room 709: speakers so LOWD
 * Meddling Heart
 * Something Better
 * Dangerous Burns
 * Heeling of The USS Dekcuc

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Emil Van Zandt III. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * Emil is a great example of conservation of detail in action. He only has three threads of Pregame (one of them a one-shot) and four on the island, but every single one of them does a ton of character work and builds him into this super fun, attitude-filled, fascinating character. Also impressive is the degree to which he manages to have an actual little arc just in the confines of the class trip, antagonizing but then bonding with Emmett Bunnell. Emil's scenes are by and large inventive, and the late-night music volume war is a blast to read, and better still, it leads directly into his story in-game.

Emil starts out alongside Emmett, and very quickly the pair team up to thwart the nefarious ambitions of Lorenzo Tavares. The two boys have excellent chemistry, and do a great job selling a bond that started out antagonistic but has evolved into serious affection and mutual respect. This also works well because the pair have some good contrast; Emmett is grumpy, prickly, and down on himself, while Emil is upbeat, goofy, and the sort of person who probably still unironically shouts YOLO. The handler chemistry is good too, with lots of trust and complimentary beats.

If I had to find things to pick at, I'd say the brief separation of the pair lands a bit funny, especially because Emmett has a whole little side adventure in which a friend dies in his arms while Emil's stuck in a slow, overcrowded thread not doing much of anything. On the other hand, their reunion is at least largely justified by Emil's assigned collar tracker, and it's back to business from then on. Aside from that, the only other thing I really wanted from Emil was just more. Toxie's two starting characters in V7 were both wild and excellent, and I in no way regret that Marco got the longer run time, but the Emil/Emmett dynamic (and just Emil in general) were good enough I think I would've had fun following along with them for most of the game.

In case it's not abundantly clear by now, I'm a huge fan of Emil. He's a character who doesn't waste any time whatsoever, making the most of every appearance. He plays to his handler's strengths, coming off as slightly larger than life, while at the same time retaining a sympathetic, emotional core. His death is horrifying and brutal, and means something to those who cared about him. If you haven't yet, I recommend giving him a read. He's thoroughly worth it. - MurderWeasel